Boggart
by Kaira-chan
Summary: [Minor spoilers for the seventh book]  James and Lily Potter had been married for nearly a year when James realized that his Boggart had changed.


Inspired by an RPG, where I play James.

Warning: Minor spoilers for the seventh book.

* * *

James and Lily had been married for nearly a year before Lily had gotten pregnant – much to the delight of James, and the surprise of his friends. Though he had changed a great deal since the days of school, he was still Prongs to all of them, and they couldn't necessarily see him as a father.

Still, Lily and James were moving into a new house in Godric's Hollow. They had lived in London for quite a while. James had, for Lily's sake, been trying to immerse himself into the muggle world for Lily, and he had been getting along swimmingly. With Lily getting pregnant though, they realized that they should probably move somewhere with a higher wizarding population, because the occasional spurts of magic that children had, they knew that their child would have a hard time living among muggle children.

It was their first day in their new home, when James woke up in the middle of the night. Lily was sleeping beside him, arms wrapped around him, and he laid there for a moment to enjoy the sensation, before finally forcing himself to unwind Lily's arms and get up.

He realized groggily that he didn't have his wand with him, and neither did Lily, so he'd have to go down to the kitchen to get the glass of water that he wanted. He grabbed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and headed down the stairs. He grabbed his and Lily's wands, which were laying on the living room table, and headed into the kitchen.

It had been stupid of them, really, to leave their wands downstairs; the war was raging just as hard as it had been before; it wasn't likely to stop and wait for James and Lily to settle into their new house.

He poured himself a glass of water, and suddenly realizing that he wasn't tired anymore (which actually wasn't a surprise, seeing as he and Lily lately hadn't been getting more than two hours of sleep at a time), he settled onto the couch with his water, and turned on the TV, switching to the muggle news channels to see if Voldemort had been up to any of his old tricks.

He watched the TV for maybe half an hour, sipping on his water, before he heard a bit of a crash coming from the kitchen. He blinked, headed over, and then heard a sound coming from the pantry. He rolled his eyes, grabbed his wand, and faced the pantry.

He knew what was in there. It was most definitely a Quintaped. Not a real one, of course, but that was the form that his Boggart always took.

In the summer before his first year at Hogwarts, he and his family had been doing some traveling to the Faroe Islands. His parents, by that time, were quite old and probably should've had their Apparition licenses taken away, but none-the-less, they had chosen to Apparate there. James had been clinging onto his father's arm, felt the familiar pulling sensation right above his navel, and opened his eyes to realize that they had landed on an island that didn't seem to have any people on it.

"Oh dear," his father had said.

James blinked at his father and frowned. "Where are we?" he asked.

"I'm not quite sure," his father said, with a look on his face saying that he might have had a rough idea, but if he was right it definitely wasn't a good thing.

"I'll go see if I can find someone," said James, running off despite his father yelling after him to stop.

It had happened quite suddenly, when a large animal, with five legs, covered in think, reddish-brown hair, leapt out of the grass onto James. It had on what appeared to be its back, two eyes and a ferocious looking mouth that was filled with very sharp teeth.

James had screamed, fighting with the monster, and then a red beam of light hit the creature. The creature rolled off of James, and James looked around to realize that there seemed to be more of the weird creatures. James' father quickly grabbed his hand, and Apparated, and, after explaining to James that he had just been attacked by a Quintaped, they had enjoyed the rest of their holiday (and James had bragged to Sirius once he had gotten home, perhaps stretching some of the facts to make it seem much more exciting than it already was, and Sirius had no idea that James had been deathly afraid of them until they had faced the boggart in class).

It wasn't hard to deal with a Quintaped Boggart though. All he had to was tie up its hair in big, bright, pink bows, and put some lipstick around it lips.

He opened the door, standing quite a bit away from it, the spell on his lips, when Lily walked out of the pantry looking quite angry.

"Lily!" James exclaimed, looking at her wide-eyed. "Did you just lock yourself in there? How did you get in?"

"Shut up, James," Lily snapped at him. "What do you think you're doing, gawking at me as though I'm some sort of animal?"

"Well," James said quietly, looking somewhat ashamed. "I thought you were a boggart…"

This proved to be the wrong thing to say, as it only got Lily angrier. "Thought I was a boggart, huh?! I'm so _glad_ you think that way, James Potter. If I'm such a boggart, maybe you should sleep on the couch tonight –"

"Lily," James pleaded. "That's not what I mea-"

"And what's the big idea, leaving me in bed alone?! Couldn't wake me up to tell me you were just going to _leave me_, could you?" Her voice had been steadily rising, and she was all but screaming now. "You couldn't have said 'Dear, I'm sick of sleeping with you, I'm going to go down stairs to watch the telle!'"

"Dear, I didn't intend –"

"Not worth –"

"I'm sorry, I'll tell you next-"

"There won't _be_ a next time, James!"

"What's going on here?" said Lily, and James gave a start when he realized that the Lily _he _was looking at was still screaming something completely different at him.

He paused and looked over at the entrance way of the kitchen, were Lily was staring at the Lily that was right in front of him.

The Lily in front of him looked over at the Lily that had just entered the room, and then turned into Severus Snape, wearing a Death Eater's cloak, and pointing his wand viciously at her.

"_Riddikulus_," Lily said, sounding kind of peeved off, and it turned into a small child of Snape. She forced him back into the pantry, then slammed the pantry door before rounding on James.

James frowned at the pantry door, trying to stop himself from feeling a pang of jealousy (she married _him_ after all. She hadn't been friends with Snape since fifth year. Though, didn't that mean that she should've stopped thinking of him?).

"And what was that?" Lily asked.

"Looked like a boggart," James said sheepishly, turning to his wife.

"And why did it look like _me_?!" she demanded.

James looked for the words that were less likely to set her off, and then decided that there probably weren't any. "Well, you can be scary when you're angry..." he said slowly.

"_What do you mean by –_" she started, but James cut her off.

"But look on the bright side! It means you can keep me in line!" he said, holding up his hands in front of him.

She fumed silently at him for a few moments, before turning on her heel. "James Potter, you can sleep on the couch tonight.

She was only angry for that night, and the next morning she woke him up with the breakfast already sitting on the living room table.

James never told Peter, Remus or Sirius what had happened, or what his new boggart was (though, he did come close to telling Sirius a couple of times after they had a few too many to drink), but the whole ordeal wasn't completely embarrassing.

From then on, whenever Lily would get mad at him (which was quite often, seeing as she was pregnant and hormonal), James would take out his wand, and say "_Riddikulus_" and Lily would start laughing.

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Please read and review. Constructive criticism more than welcome, flames will be mocked. 


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